Julian Home | Page 4

as a sizar, with no prospect of remaining at the University unless he won himself the means of doing so by his own success. It was this thought that had made him sigh.
CHAPTER TWO.
JULIAN HOME.
"O thou goddess, Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon'st In these two princely boys; they are as gentle As zephyrs blowing beneath the violet, Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as fierce, Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud'st wind That by the top doth take the mountain pine, And makes him bow to the vale." Cymbeline, Act 4, scene 2.
It was but recently, (as will be explained hereafter), that the circumstances had arisen which had rendered it necessary for Julian Home to enter Saint Werner's as a sizar and since that necessity had arisen, he had been far from happy. A peculiar sensitiveness had been from childhood the distinctive feature of his character. It rendered him doubly amenable to every emotion of pleasure and pain, and gave birth to a self-conscious spirit, which made his nature appear weaker, when a boy, than it really was. While he was at Harton, this self-consciousness made him keenly, almost tremblingly, alive to the opinions of others about himself. His self-depreciation arose from real humility, and there was in his heart so deep a fountain of love towards all his fellows, and so sympathising an admiration of all their good or brilliant qualities, that he was far too apt to suffer himself to be tormented by the indifference or dislike of those who were far his inferiors.
It was strange that such a boy should have had enemies, but he was sadly aware that in that light some regarded him. Had it been possible to conciliate them without any compromise in his line of action, he would have done so at any cost; but as their enmity arose from that vehement moral indignation which Julian both felt and expressed against the iniquities which he despised and disapproved, he knew that all union with them was out of his power. As a general rule, the best boys are by no means the most popular.
It was the great delight of Julian's detractors to compare him unfavourably with their hero, Bruce. Bruce, as a fair scholar and a good cricketer, with no very marked line of his own--as a fine-looking fellow, anxious to keep on good terms with everybody, and with an apparently hearty "well met" for all the world--cut against the grain of no one's predilections, and had the voice of popular favour always on his side. While ambition made him work tolerably hard, as far as he could do so without attracting observation, the line he took was to disparage industry, and ally himself with the merely cricketing set, with some of whom he might be seen strolling arm-in-arm, in loud conversation, at every possible opportunity. Julian, on the other hand, though a fair cricketer, soon grew weary of the "shop" about that game, which for three months formed the main staple of conversation among the boys; and while his countenance was too expressive to conceal this fact, he in his turn found himself unable to enlist more than a few in any interest for those intellectual pursuits which were the chief joy of his own life.
"Home, I've been watching you for the last half-hour," said Bruce, one day at dinner, "and you haven't opened your lips."
"I've had nothing to say."
"Why not?"
"Because, since we came in, not one word has been said about any human subject but cricket, cricket, cricket; it's been the same for the last two months; and as I haven't been playing this morning--"
"Well, no one wants you to talk," interrupted Brogten, one of the eleven, Julian's especial foe. "I say, Bruce, did you see--"
"I was only going to add," said Julian, with perfect good-humour, heedless of the interruption, "that I couldn't discuss a game I didn't see."
"Nobody asked you, sir, she said," retorted Brogten rudely; "if it had been some sentimental humbug, I dare say you'd have mooned about it long enough."
"Better, at any rate, than some of your low stories, Brogten," said Lillyston, firing up on his friend's behalf.
"I don't know. I like something manly."
"Vice and manliness being identical, then, according to your notions?" said Lillyston.
Brogten muttered an angry reply, in which the only audible words were "confound" and "milksops."
"Well spoken, advocate of sin and shame; Known by thy bleating, Ignorance thy name,"
thought Julian; but he did not condescend to make any further answer.
"I hate that kind of fellow," said Brogten, loud enough for the friends to hear, as they rose from the table; "fellows who think themselves everybody's superiors, and walk with their noses in the air."
"I wonder that you will still be talking, Brogten; nobody marks you," said Lillyston, treating with the